Storage industry?

Through my studies of CCENT and Linux, I have always had an interest in Storage and Cloud technologies. My most respected mentor has always worked for Netapp and has taught me a few things here and there, which is probably what has led to my interest in the field.

A networking certification seems to set a good foundation for just about any career in IT, but I was trying to figure out a good next step after that. I have been employed as a Help Desk Specialist and a Field Tech for about three years now, so I was looking to start educating myself on storage.

However, when I check out job postings, I am having a hard time finding certifications that are requested for these sorts of things. I have never heard mention of Storage+, though I do hear mention of the technologies that I assume would be involved in such a certification (SAN, NAS, RAID, etc). Has anyone ever tried to break into this industry or know of certifications that would be worth snagging?

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Asif Dasl

There is EMC & NetApp certifications but I've only seen them as part of job postings for other things like VMware. That might just be where I am though. Getting in to a storage only job, I think is probably one of the hardest IT fields to get in to.

Where I am there is very few storage only job postings and most of them are looking for extensive experience before allowing you to touch their infrastructure (rightly so)- but it pays very well. It was something I considered for a little while but I think I will stick to VMware.

I haven't seen any job postings look for Storage+ but if you wanted to read up on it more I would recommend 2 books:

EMC Information Storage and Management

Cisco Storage Networking Fundamentals

I'd be interested in hearing from others in the storage field myself...

kbowen0188

There are some free training materials for both EMC and NetApp that I have found on their websites, but most of their training requires you to be either a partner or an employee, neither of which I am. I have gotten the same impression as you, that it is hard to break into, and have considered going a Sys Admin route beforehand. There is also the Help Desk at a place like Netapp and EMC, but so far I haven't had much luck breaking into those, as they like a certain amount of experience as well.